UNDER PRESSURE, NETANYAHU OFFERS TO WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM LEBANON

Under pressure to end its 20-year occupation of southern Lebanon, Israel is offering to withdraw its troops if the Lebanese can guarantee the Jewish state will be safe from cross-border guerrilla attacks.

Israel until recently had insisted that such a pullout be part of a broader peace agreement with Lebanon and its dominant neighbor, Syria.

Now Israel is saying it need only negotiate a satisfactory security arrangement.

Lebanon and Syria immediately rejected the Israeli overture as "nothing new," noting that Israel had been ordered by the United Nations to withdraw from Lebanese territory immediately and unconditionally, without further negotiation.

"No one, including Lebanon, is allowed to reconsider or interpret" the U.N. order, known as Resolution 425, Lebanese Foreign Minister Faris Bouez said in Beirut. "Lebanon's mere acceptance of sitting down at the negotiating table would constitute a backing down" from the resolution.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under mounting pressure to end his government's costly, deadly entanglement with Lebanon, whose southern territory was occupied by Israel in 1978 in what the Israelis have said was an operation to protect their borders.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers have since been killed in fighting with Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas, who want to drive Israel from a 9-mile-wide security zone inside Lebanon.

Three Israeli soldiers were killed last week and 39 last year, the highest toll in Lebanon in 13 years.

"The moment a promise is made that Hezbollah will be disarmed in south Lebanon and will not pose a threat to the northern [Israeli) communities, we will be willing to leave south Lebanon," Netanyahu said on Monday.

Senior officials in November began floating the idea of a troop withdrawal. But only now has Netanyahu added his voice.